Readers' comments

In a time of manufactured crisis, the club of sclerotic old political hacks, the U.S. Senate led by the Neo-Liberal Diane Feinstein, successor to Ms. Jane Harman as the most prominent of the 'National Security State Liberals',can be relied upon to back their man. Fear and the protective arms of daddy, President Obama, means more that the outmoded Constitution.
The New York Times even found an academic hack who wrote an opinion piece arguing for the the scrapping of said Constitution.
The Republic has fallen on hard times, it's operatives, it's very protectors undermine it foundations from within. One might be able in a moment of nihilistic cynicism to entertain something resembling fatalism, or make a commitment, as a California voter, that Sen. Feinstein be replaced with an actual anti-war,anti-fascist New Deal Liberal. Or at the least inveigh against the bankrupt chorus of Constitutional usurpers led by the egregious Sen. Feinstein.

Hoover blackmailed members of Congress for 30 years using personal information from snooping.
People either forget their history or fail to read it at all.
Evidently, that includes Congressmen and Senators.

"analyzing the circumstances under which it would be lawful for United States armed forces or intelligence community assets to target for killing a United States citizen who is deemed to be a terrorist"

Awesome! Can i designate my neighbors as terrorists and have a drone sent over? Their dog has been crapping on my lawn. Definitely bio-terrorism in my book.

"...Anwar al-Awlaki, an American accused of being a terrorist who was killed in a drone strike, along with a second American citizen, on September 30th 2011 (another drone killed Mr al-Awlaki's 16-year-old, Colorado-born son two weeks later)."

The guy may have been a scumbag, but still, a trial would have been nice. My understanding is, he was tried in absentia in Yemen, while in US, Obama just offed the guy like some kind of Wild Wild West sheriff. I find it troubling that Yemen has a better functioning judicial process than does US.

I am not sure I agree with people who claim that more privacy and less "snooping" is a good thing. If one believes that the government functions in the best interests of its citizens and is not about to turn into a tyrant, then as long as the government can guarantee that the data will not be misused (sold to advertisers, hacked into, etc.), there seems to be no reason to oppose data collection other than "privacy". After all a similar argument is advanced against gun rights i.e. "The government is not about to turn into a tyrant so one doesn't need to defend oneself against it."
As to the question of privacy, the number of crimes prevented and the number of culprits caught amply justify the snooping. Take for example the Rajat Gupta insider trading case, the LIBOR scam, the Times Square Bomb case, etc. the accused in each of which were apprehended using methods which fall under "snooping".

I supose it would depend on what the data is used for. As the mantra goes if you got nothing to hide etc.
But a certain extent would depend on preportionality. As many
people do have something hide to greater or lesser extent if look hard enough. Whether that be an taxed income, a cheater partner, a infrigment of copy right, a fraudlednt loan application, a lie on a job application, dishonesty to family or friends over income.
Drug use prosetitue use porn use. Driving overspeed limit.
So would become a question of preportionally as to what data is used for.
If the information is to aviod serious crime terrosism than I think most people would be happy with the agrrenagment. If it was used for more trivial purposes that may be not so.
Here in edinburgh a few years ago, we had clowns from the council filiming people to give them a ticket for dropping a ciggarette. This could have effect of undermining the system. Just pets of the state collecting on handouts in edinburgh council to avoid real work however, many people anti litter smoking considered this gross dis preportate and would start consider correctness of the survialance in wide terms.
The uk of course having one of the most comprehensive cctv system in the world. Which largely is supported.
One way to wreck the support would be to mis use the iformation mis use filimings, clowns from the council etc.
The same princple with other data if people start reciving letters from there loan company that they lied on there application, after the information has been passed on the pusuit of truth and justice. Then people may feel that this is a not a preportion reason to be spying.
Of course these things done on spec so the preportionall cause for spying can be somewhat after the fact.
So that the pre portional cause has to applied restrospectivly.
So far example if someone was being followed electronicsally and found out that had untaxed income. It would not be pre portional to pass this information on to tax authority. As it would not have been pre portional to to spy for this purpose.
As more and more data is collected, well now in fact even. The question of retrospective proportionally would be the main one. Rather than pro active.
So as long as proper proportionally is used then would expect most people to support. Under there nothing hide thinking. If the nothing to hide means no organised crime voilince or terrorism then may hold.
IF the nothing to hide means they have never dropped a cigarette or infrinded a copy right etc.
Then may be less support for that.

"If one believes that the government functions in the best interests of its citizens."

How can you determine that when the government hides both the what and the why of their actions?

Also, the problem isn't snooping; it's snooping without any authorization or oversight whatsoever. It's the difference between getting court permission for a wiretap on individuals suspected of insider trading and just bugging the phones of everyone who owns stocks just to see if they might be doing anything bad.

This is classic Nanny State thinking, whereby the citizens entrust their Fearless Leaders to just do the right thing, because -- as Domitian says -- government functions in the best interests of its citizens and is not about to turn into a tyrant.

This is truly the mind of those who want their Big Daddy Government to keep them safe from all the evildoers who are just outside their door, waiting to take it all away! And to do it at all costs, even trampling the Constitution to no end, because our Fearless Leaders are so moral and just, they will ALWAYS protect us from the evildoers, and not abuse their illegal powers.

Truly, truly, a frightening mindset. One which disgusts me, because their fear enables the Constitution shredding to continue unabated -- no matter what the thinking populace says, no matter how many lawsuits are filed. The ever-frightened citizenry are the enablers, dragging the rest of us down. Pity.

I absolutely agree with what Mr. Dean says, there should be more oversight and authorization. All I said was snooping in itself isn't a bad thing as long as it is subject to proper controls and is in the correct proportion.
As to the qwertybill21 saying that I and others like me have a frightening mindset, it is not us but it is those who believe that the Constitution is the word of God and that there can be no debate about it who are frightening. Many of the rights mentioned in the Constitution are "inalienable" but that does not mean that there can be no tweaking of the others such as the Second Amendment. The problems and challenges of the 21st century are different from those of the 18th and they have to be dealt with differently. All that sarcasm of yours is misplaced: You must remember, the Constitution was written by people, not divinities and they were more or less similar to the leaders of today.
"Dragging the rest of us down" In what way may I ask?

If I were a terrorist I would communicate by Skype-to-Skype calls and some third-party email encryption app. Consumers should demand that service providers not log IPs. Unless you're paying for calls, service providers don't need to log any calls either. And if you use the Petraeus-Broadwell method of using the same email account, destination information doesn't need to be logged, leaving authorities with only timestamps and service providers can even offer to encrypt that. Authorities would have to intercept internet communications in real-time and the only info they'd get out of it is the IP address at that moment. Dynamic IP addressing can make that info of limited use. IOW, the providers can make useful wire-tapping extremely difficult. I hope consumer demand gets us to that point.

As for targeted killings, more transparency might be nice but I see no alternative to the program itself. Would you have use wage war on Pakistan to get Bin Laden? If he was a US citizen, what difference does that make? If we were captured alive, he'd be entitled to a trial but that isn't the issue.

But some terrorists may not go to such lengths. If you look at the 2010 Times Square Bomb case, the bomber was using a pre-paid disposable cell phone whose logs the agencies accessed which in turn led them to him. Wiretapping is also used to provide proof of financial impropriety in various insider trading cases.

Probably not much, if anything. His position as a "commanding officer" in an organization at war with the US made him a legitimate military target, regardless of his citizenship.

The only difference would be if he had been captured, in which case a US citizen is entitled to a criminal trial in US District Court. Not having US citizenship, he would have been subject to trial by court martial (or perhaps even summary execution as an irregular combatant).

So why did so many of the bankers remain uncharged? I can't believe Gov. Spitzer got nailed but the people who broke the world economy left no trace of their misdeeds. (This is acknowledging that wiretapping and bank transaction oversight are two different things.)

OK I will comment. I listened to the one day rushed debate, particularly the arguments made by Sen. Wyden who advocated for his amendment. I thought the opponents, primarily Sen. Feinstein who I recall arguing against, were far more persuasive. Information is good, agreed, but bits and pieces in a vacuum can be mischievous in the sense that can create falsely negative impressions about a potentially legitimate program that results in more, more, more until a legitimate program is gutted. I agree it's not the way to proceed. These issues are tough, because secrecy is understandable so I prefer serious analysis versus sort of blanket statements or outrage. Sen. Paul's amendment I don't understand the point, and seems more of a punt to a court that would rule the way he wants, which is an approach to legislating I strongly dislike, and 3 versus 5 years seems insignificant of an issue, but I admit I may be missing something there. On the President, I don't really consider his campaign comments or much else he says too seriously. He's too partisan and I regret voting for him in 2008. I haven't read the court opinion yet, but I do struggle to understand why the legal opinion justifying strikes against American citizens designated terrorists is not public. It should be. Someone in Congress should try to work their way through the thicket, no?

Maybe those bold Spanish judges that caught Pinochet will go after the US assassins. The evidence seems quite compelling that these are ex judicio killings and would violate the Hague conventions as well as most countries' legal process, except perhaps Russia. However, the US doesn't respect international law. So we may have to leave it to a Spanish judge to initiate extradition proceedings. If I were a Washington bureaucrat plausibly linked to these activities, I would be very circumspect about leaving the country.

I can think of just one reason, in law, when it is legal to kill a person without trial : if that person is an enemy soldier.

I don't believe that the citizenship or location of an enemy soldier matters(*). What matters is that they be actively involved in planning, supporting, or executing violent attacks on a sovereign state.

To be fair, America has to my knowledge never tried an enemy commander for killing US soldiers in combat.

However, one could claim that the Fort Hood Massacre and other terrorist attacks on US military targets could be seen as legal in the light of US drone attacks. Nidal Malak Hassan was a traitor but not a terrorist, his targets was perceived enemy combatants.

In terms of attacks on US military targets, that would be a reasonable argument, though not much of a defense -- armed treason in wartime has been a capital offense since time immemorial, and rightly so.

As to trying enemy commanders, I don't know, but the US did try a 15-year-old Taliban for murder. Said 15-year-old fought in defense of a Taliban compound, threw a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier, was wounded and captured. In my book that makes him a POW, not a murderer. The fact I find the soldier's death tragic, and the Taliban odious, has no bearing on the matter.

If impeachment for killing suspected terrorists is pursued, you'd soon find Fox News and Rush Limbaugh defending Obama and attacking congressional Democrats. If you want Republicans to take Congress in a wave election, you're welcomed to try.

While I agree that the targeted killing of US citizens abroad is troubling, to say the least, the same cannot be said of warrantless wiretapping of international communications. This clearly falls under the border search exception, thus those communications enjoy no reasonable expectation of privacy.

I think that, as always, the devil is in the details. If the wiretapping were of domestic communications, and the US citizen were killed abroad in the course of committing belligerent acts, then I would agree with you.

However, to the best of my knowledge, that has not been the case. Incredibly intrusive customs searches of electronic devices and letters are allowed, even in the absence of any suspicion of contraband. Wiretapping of electronic communications seems to be a clear-cut analog.

Nor am I aware of evidence that al-Awlaki was engaged in any meaningful form of hostilities (i.e. planning or carrying out attacks on US interests) at the time of his assassination.

It's my understanding that under the British Common Law the crime of murder of a citizen can be prosecuted in the UK wherever the offence occurred. If Colorado still has this rule on its statute book, there may therefore be the possibility of its state courts prosecuting Obama after he leaves office and thus loses his immunity. Any specialists out there able to comment on this thought?

Weird, so the death penalty is unconstitutional if you are under 18 at the time of your crime (per Roper), unless (1) your alleged crime is being a terrorist, (2) you have received no due process protections to assure that you are in fact a terrorist, and (3) the method of execution is drone strike.

I guess I should have taken Constitutional Law, because that is far from intuitive. Luckily President Obama lectured on Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago, so I can trust his judgment.

True, but those are exigent circumstances, and I could even see a Mathews-type test arriving at the conclusion that no process is due in such situations.

Alleged terrorists (and their 16 year old sons) sitting in Yemen pose far less of an immediate threat, if they pose any threat at all (i.e., if they are not in fact terrorists). Some process is due if we want to be ruled by law rather than by the whim of men.

Yeah, let's do that. The rule of law is another thing both parties paint as sacred and then photoshop into a jar of urine. But I prefer it by a lot to all of these deeply principled incoherent sons of bitches running around.

This is disgusting. Every year gives me a new reason to renew my EFF membership, ever since I was barely able to scrape the funds to buy a student membership in my freshman year of college.

Sadly many of the original people who spoke out against the FISA warrantless wiretapping program, and its retroactive immunity provisions for the telecoms providers that illegally violated the fourth amendment, have now been cowed into submission... I'm looking at you John McCain.

And let's not forget the 180 a certain man performed now that he's up for an illustrious position:
"Congress has an obligation to protect both the American people and the Constitution. That’s the oath we take. Supporting the current version of the FISA bill is tantamount to asking Congress to cover up President Bush’s blatant assault on our basic freedoms."
John Kerry. Same guy that voted for renewal just recently.

You can appeal as a matter of right but Judge McMahon's rant was a tangent and there's no reason for it to be even considered on appeal. The issue was whether the FOIA request was properly denied and she states that it was. Aulaqi v. Obama which addressed McMahon's tangent was already litigated and dismissed years ago.

"...certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws..."

What a pity the judge did not choose to start here, rule that the burden is on the government to produce the documents and reasons why its actions are lawful. The government would doubtless have appealed. But at least it would have been clear that the burden of showing some justification for its positon was on the government -- which, after all, is the only one with access to said justifications.